Federal Complaint Regarding Posted Addresses Indicates Bigger Problems

Federal Complaint Regarding Posted Addresses Indicates Bigger Problems

CopBlaster.com received a phone call today from a federal officer in Portland, Oregon complaining about addresses posted on the website. The timing of that phone call suspiciously corresponded with a personal visit to the same federal building where that officer works from Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Greg F. Wolf who is the subject of one of the posts being complained about (https://copblaster.com/blast/25843/chad-f-wolf-acting-secretary-of-homeland-security). That could be a coincidence, but one comment the officer made left us with the impression that the call may have been motivated by recent postings pertaining to high ranking officials. Those high ranking officials include Mr. Wolf as well as Acting Customs & Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan (https://copblaster.com/blast/25831/mark-morgan-orders-border-patrol-to-patrol-federal-courthouse), Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (https://copblaster.com/blast/25847/protesters-arrested-at-kentucky-attorney-general-daniel-camerons-home), Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, and members of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) command staff (https://copblaster.com/blast/25820/seattle-police-department-command-staff-roster-with-mayor-jenny-durkan). All those postings were based on either public records or newsworthy incidents.

The addresses for Chad Wolf and Mark Morgan came from public records. If anyone does a Google search for either one of them with the addresses listed on their profiles they will find plenty of places where they can view their full addresses listed with their full names for free. That is why we are skeptical as to how current the addresses are. As Jenny Durkan proved, any high ranking government official that wants to hide their address from public records can do so by purchasing property through a trust and submitting removal requests to public records brokers. When protests were held outside her mansion that location was not in public records and the records we looked at made it look as if she lived in a law office. We expected to see the same for Wolf and Morgan, but instead found their most recent residential addresses listed as residences under their names. That led us to think that they probably bought those properties in the past and still own them, but do not live there because we figured they would have probably purchased new homes through a trust. Such trusts can be used by anyone and are commonly used by government officials to keep their home addresses secret. The end results are their addresses being listed in the names of the companies that set up the trusts instead of their own. This is why we think that the complaint we received may be indicative of bigger problems for Wolf, Morgan, or maybe even both. If either of those addresses are current that would mean that whoever is in charge of security for them failed to exercise due diligence miserably. We are sure that the heads of DHS and CBP both have people employed full time to manage their security, so how could it be possible for those people to allow their current home addresses to be publicly available for free on the internet? By proving that they are not competent to be as well paid as they are. If those addresses are current then Wolf and Morgan have a much bigger problem, that problem being that their personal security is in the hands of incompetent people.

The addresses of Jenny Durkan and Daniel Cameron were not found in public records, but their homes were the sites of high profile protests recently, so their addresses became pubic domain that way. In the case of Mayor Durkan, her address was restricted by law due to alleged death threats she received when she was the United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington. Someone she knew outed her address to protest organizers who then posted it online and marched there. As a result countless news stories showed pictures of her house. When a location like that enters the news people can legally report where the newsworthy event took place. In the case of Daniel Cameron, we are not sure how protesters found his recently purchased address. We just know that countless mainstream news outlets published what block it was on and showed the house number on camera. In both cases it seems that those officials have the much bigger problems of having people in their own camps willing to out that information.

OUR RESPONSE

In response to this complaint we removed the home addresses of the following 16 people from the website:

Portland Police Officer John Bartlett (although the house number was already censored)

Portland Police Officer Michelle Petty (although the house number was already censored)

Detroit Police Chief James Elmer Craig.

Opelousas Police Officer Tyron David Andrepont

Antioch Police officer Michael Mellone

Former Las Cruces Police Officer Christopher Smelser

Buffalo Police Officer Robert McCabe

Woodlynne Police Officer Ryan Dubiel

NYPD Officer Vincent D’Andraia

Ft. Lauderdale Officer Steven Pohorence

Buffalo Police Officer Aaron Torgalski

Atlanta Police Officer Roland Claud

Atlanta Officer Willie Sauls

Atlanta Police Officer Lonnie Hood

Former Atlanta Police Officer Mark Gardner

Former Atlanta Police Officer Ivory Streeter

We removed those addresses because we determined that their potential value to protest organizers has significantly declined since they were originally posted. We began posting some addresses again after the murder of George Floyd (https://copblaster.com/blast/25733/derek-chauvin-chokes-the-life-out-of-george-floyd-on-camera). At the time we believed that they could be useful for peaceful protesters because protesting outside homes of police officers and other officials is often an effective way to air grievances (ex: https://www.the-sun.com/news/725983/ammon-bundy-protest-cop-arrested-anti-vaxx-mom-playdate-coronavirus/). This was done with the intention of removing the addresses at a later date once the protests stopped. At the time we had no idea that they would keep going for so long. Today we decided to remove some addresses posted early in the protests for which we no longer felt would be useful for protesters.

We are not removing several other addresses at this time. Those addresses include those belonging to high ranking officials if those under their command have recently violated the civil rights of civilians. Other addresses that were not removed belong to those caught on camera doing evil deeds, those charged with heinous crimes, and those believed to have committed heinous crimes whose bosses have not officially named them if we believe that there is credible evidence showing that they are probably guilty.

Published at Thu, 16 Jul 2020 20:02:14 +0000

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